The New Era at Saddle Creek Records continues with yesterday’s announcement that the label signed Portland’s Black Belt Eagle Scout.

The project is headed by singer/songwriter Katherine Paul, who “grew up in a small Indian reservation, the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, surrounded by family focused on native drumming, singing, and arts,” according to the Creek press release.

Her Saddle Creek debut, Mother of My Children, is actually a re-release of an album that came out a year ago. Maybe you caught BBES when they opened for Built to Spill earlier this year? That was around the time when Saddle Creek was considering the band (or so they said. Maybe they’d already made a decision). At the time Mother of My Children was already in Spotify, and I can attest that it’s pretty tasty (It has since been pulled from Spotify, durn).

So let’s see, last month Saddle Creek signed Tomberline; then there’s Young Jesus and Stef Chura signed late last year, not to mention a new Sam Evian album that came out June 1. Holy smokes, what’s next? Saddle Creek is really making year 25 count.

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I may have gotten too clever for my own good with the title of this month’s Over the Edge column: Fable of the Reconstruction. While those of you who followed indie music back in the day will immediately recognize it as a reference to the 1985 album Fables of the Reconstruction, it has nothing to do with R.E.M. Rather, it’s a look at a post-Trump America. It’s never too soon to dream (All it’ll take is for you to get off your ass and vote). You can read online right here or in its printed July issue, on newsstands now.

Quintron has been making genre-defying noise, soundscape, and house rocking dance music in New Orleans for over 20 years. The majority of his fifteen full-length albums, many created with artist / puppeteer Panacea Theriac (aka Miss Pussycat), have the psychedelic soul of New Orleans party jams as filtered through tough distorted organs and a junk heap of self-made electronic instruments.